Random News Items

A few things that have tickled my particular fancy over the past couple of days, in no particular order:

Rawson Thurber, director of Dodgeball, is slated to write and direct the big-screen version Magnum, P.I.

There's a 3-d Star Wars short making the rounds of the internet.

The New York Times armchair quarterbacking of the summer box office results.

iFanboy.com is one geektastic site.

Good Flicks

I've made no secret to anyone who's asked that I think one of the best films I've seen this year is City Island. I'm a little late to the party, but the writer/director has been writing articles in Salon.com about the process. His final one, to coordinate with the DVD release, can be found here.

It's a breezy story about careers in Hollywood, the film, and the future. You should check out the article, and the film.

Space Bugs

This may be the most interesting science news I've seen in a while. Apparently, there are microbes that create oxygen that can survive in space. Read the BBC article here.

Interestingly enough, no one seems to question the prudence of putting something in the vacuum of space for over a year, discovering it can survive, then brining it back to earth. Doesn't it occur to someone that those microbes might be pissed off?

How I spent My Summer Vacation

The word "summer" conjures up so many images: tire swings over cool lakes, endless afternoons reading for pleasure, fireflies at dusk. What amazes me most is the long list of items I have planned in May that I think I'll accomplish over the course of the summer months.

The list, of course, is doomed to failure, simply because, for the most part, my kids are around all the time and given the chance, I'd rather spend time with them than scratch items off that summer list, especially when it contains such things as "clean the basement." Someday, my kids will be moving out and I'm pretty sure that crap in the basement will still be waiting. That rationale doesn't always help my stress levels, though, since I'm the kind of guy who, when he makes a list, expects to actually complete it. So, I have fun with my kids, but that damn list is going to be taunting me when they go back to school.

My summer list includes all kinds of unrealistic projects from domestic life and work life, most of which were patently ridiculous. There wasn't really much chance I was gonna get time to install new kitchen cabinets, was there? What was I thinking? For one thing, I wasn't thinking we were going to be living through the hottest summer on record. I don't mind sweat, as long as it comes with exercise or honest physical labor, but sweating as a matter of course just sucks. It saps my will to set one foot out of my air-conditioned bedroom.

So, how have I spent my summer? Hanging out with my kids at museums, movie theaters, book stores, coffee shops and other air-conditioned venues. We camped out in the back yard. We spent afternoons at the pool. There were swim team events and tennis lessons. Visits to grandparents and dinners with friends. Cocktails on the front porch, and lots of baseball on TV. We grilled, we ate take-out, we skipped meals and then snacked at inappropriate hours. There were fireworks and water-gun fights. Board games and summer reading projects. Chores and piano lessons. And yes, there were lazy hours spent reading, followed by fireflies at dusk. The tire swing over the lake will have to wait for next year.

5th Grade Redux

From the super-secret list of things people don't tell you before you become a parent (and no, we won't share it with you, because misery does, in fact, love company):

#17 -- The Redux Principle. Having children guarantees that you will be forced to relive the worst moments of your own childhood.

Case in point: 5th grade. Not my favorite year of school when I was a kid. I had the experience of spending a year engaged in intellectual redundancy, with the distinct feeling that I was ready to move on. This, of course, made the time stretch out into some unholy event horizon of the black hole of public education. I felt like a freak because I had absorbed everything that elementary school had to teach. Yet I was emotionally attached to the comforting surroundings and the regular presence of people who were my own age, even if time has proven the term "friend" has a very fluid meaning.

Now, some decades later, I'm going through 5th grade for a second time with my own children, and suffering through all the conflicting emotions with them. Time has given me the perspective to articulate the problems I had back then (see the above paragraph) so I figured I had some parental insight. However, that ignores the guiding principle all children live by (which is available only to kids as their own super-secret list that you have to figure out through guesswork): parents are clearly imbeciles and any insight they have is the insight of a feeble-minded hamster which will routinely eat its own poop.

The end result: you are finally equipped to deal with 5th grade and the boredom, bullying, cliques, teachers, administrators, ceaseless activities, fear, exhilaration, and all the issues that seem so momentous to pre-teens, but the kids don't care in the least that you can help them. Which leaves you feeling just as powerless as doing it the first time around, except you have to watch the people you love the most suffer through everything, when your fiercest wish is to spare them that suffering. You have to be patient (not my long suit) and watch them figure it out themselves.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart.